A verdict has been reached in the lawsuit between original Madden programmer Robin Antonick and EA, awarding Antonick more than $11 million in damages. The verdict also opens the door for Antonick to pursue the same claims against EA for games released after 1996, where revenues exceed $3 billion.
Antonick developed the first Madden title in 1988 for MS-DOS, Commodore, and Apple II platforms. In 2011, he sued EA for millions of dollars of unpaid royalties, claiming that the contract he signed with the publisher in 1986 stipulated he should be paid royalties not only for the games he developed, but any derivative works.
After three days of deliberations, a jury in U.S. District Court in the Northern District of California found that several EA games published between 1990-1996 were "virtually identical" to Antonick's original version of Madden NFL Football.
“This is a tremendous victory. In many ways, this trial was a test of each party’s version of events, said Rob Carey, one of Antonick's attorneys. "The jury uniformly rejected the idea that this game was developed without Robin’s work. It is, if nothing, a good omen for the next phase of the litigation.”
A future phase of the trial will be held to determine if Antonick is owed more from EA for games published between 1997 and the present, where revenues could make him an extremely wealthy man indeed.
Lucy O'Brien is Entertainment Editor at IGN AU. Follow her ramblings on IGN at Luce_IGN_AU,or @Luceobrien on Twitter.
Source : feeds[dot]ign[dot]com
No comments:
Post a Comment